The bliss of boating is how quickly you are very far away and how connected you are to everything around. We have shipped not only our lines but, for a time, our workaday world. We are sailing across the Chesapeake in a 30-foot Cape Dory, chartered out of Annapolis, now sailing to St. Michaels.
It is a chilly day, drizzly and dim. Paul has on his oilskins; the girls and I are in slickers. Elizabeth is three, a gallant, gay sailor-girl in a bright orange life-vest, a too-big green slicker, a purple hat and bright blue rubber boots. Her braids curl with the damp. She leans over to watch the waves and hums happily to herself. ‘The water is like Play-Doh,’ she says. ‘It has fingerprints in it.’ Margaret is four-and-a-half months, a snug bundle tucked on the floor of the cockpit. Her little face is framed with the hoods of two jackets; her hands are inside her sleeves. She waves her arms for a while and smiles at us, then slips off into sleep, in a small boat on a wide water.
We arrive in St. Michaels before dusk and anchor in Fogg Cove. The maritime museum and its Hooper Strait Lighthouse are behind us. The velvet green lawn of the Inn at Perry Cabin is before us. We’ve been in St. Michaels before; we’ve looked at this water from those shores. But now we are seeing the land from the Bay. It’s an unfamiliar view of a familiar place, and we relish the unexpected charm of the known made strange before turning to chores — changing damp socks for dry ones, heating chili for supper. We hear the chime of church bells and a clock striking and the honking of geese overhead. The two girls are in the V-berth; Paul has cribbed it in so neither can fall out. Elizabeth coos, ‘Go to sleep, Margaret.’ Soon we hear them snoring, and we look at each other and smile. Paul checks the anchor light. ‘Katherine, come.’ In the dark, a swan is swimming by.
Annapolis to St. Michaels, St. Michaels to Rock Hall, Rock Hall back across the Bay. A wonderful run: the wind steady and strong, we on a beam reach. The main is up, and the jib, and the only sounds are the creaking of the lines, the squeaking of the wheel, and the slap of the waves against the hull. The sky is blue but cluttered with clouds. We sail past the Baltimore Light. We sail into the Magothy and past Gibson Island and past Dobbins Island. The light is growing quiet by the time we put the engine on; pale, green beams shine through the clouds onto the shore. We motor on in search of an anchorage, sliding around a curve and into a quiet secluded little cove. A wooded shoreline, the trees touched with russet, just starting to turn. A few houses, with docks and boats. No one out but us.
Our last night aboard. We have beef stew and the last of a cheap bottle of wine. The light grows clearer and more golden. Clouds lit in peaceful glory. We take mugs of milky coffee back on deck and watch the fading of the light. The water very still, reflecting the pink and blue of the sky. The highest clouds are lit coral-pink by the sun, the lower clouds purple-grey. We see a great blue heron, here a screech owl, listen to the fish splash and see the ripples they make, circles that catch the light. Margaret dozes in Paul’s arms. Elizabeth leans into my knee and sighs and says, ‘This is very nice.’
The morning is pearly: cloudy at dawn, then clearing slightly for the sun, mist rising off glassy water. Elizabeth climbs into the still damp cockpit. ‘Elizabeth!’ we call. ‘Come back down — it’s still wet out there!’ ‘I’m looking at the world,’ she tells us matter-of-factly. ‘It is very beautiful. Did you know God made the world?’ Paul and I look at each other, then turn to see the world with Elizabeth.
We bundle the girls again into sweaters and life vests and hats. Margaret is in a jolly mood. Elizabeth is happy winding a short bit of line around a winch. We leave a curve of tiny bubbles as we motor slowly out of the cove and into the broader river. The world here is all pearl. The light is a suffused, pale, creamy grey. The water is gently rippled glass, carrying in it the shapes and colors of the clouds above. Water and sky match, endless and shining. And in this spell-world, our small boat is caught between gleaming oyster sea and cloudy oyster sky. We are connected to familiar things in unfamiliar ways, and recognizing joy.
* Another old essay revisited; this an edited version of ‘Recognizing Joy’; originally in Chesapeake Bay Magazine, April 2000.
Prudent Graces 